Evergrande Group Photo: CFP

 
Evergrande delivered 37,899 new homes to the buyers in December with plans to settle 30,000 more homes in January, the group said in an announcement on its official WeChat account on Monday.

"Despite facing unprecedented difficulties, Evergrande has refused to lay down. Thanks to the hard work of all our staff, 92.9 percent of the projects nationwide have resumed construction as of the end of December," the group said, revising their final figure up from 91.7 percent in late December.

The steady progress of the resumption of construction work helped the group achieve a major breakthrough in home sales, with one of its new projects in Haikou, south China's Hainan Province selling out within five seconds of its launch, the group said.

The settlement figure in December, however, was beneath the 39,000-target the group set in December.

During a meeting aimed at resuming construction and ensuring delivery of projects on December 26, founder Xu Jiayin said that "with the last five days left in this month, we must make an all-out push to achieve the target of delivering 39,000 homes in December."

Xu added that following Evergrande finding itself ensnared in a liquidity crisis, less than 10,000 apartments were settled across September, October and November, but with the resumption of construction, the company had 115 projects scheduled for delivery in December.

Xu noted that as long as Evergrande resumes construction work at all costs, the company will be able to deliver finished products to clients and paying down its debt.

China's real estate market remained stable in 2021. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) on Monday showed that the total sales area for commercial housing stood at 1.79 billion square meters in 2021, up 1.9 percent from the previous year. 

The data reinforced the resilience of China's property market, which will not be thrown off course, Yan Yuejin, research director at Shanghai-based E-house China R&D Institute, told the Global Times on Monday.

The need for homes prompted by China's increasing rate of urbanization remains unchanged, which will be a major booster for property sector growth in 2022, Yan said.

In 2021, investment in real estate development increased by 4.4 percent year-on-year, according to NBS data.

"It is expected that in 2022 there will be more accommodative policies to spur property investment and land sales," he said.